CNET reports that by Sunday evening, five days before its North American release, dozens of copies of the Marvel film were available for download from The Pirate Bay. The copies were recorded by people who sneaked hand-held cameras into theaters, rather than leaked edits.

In April 2009, an unfinished edit of X-Men Origins: Wolverine leaked online a month before the film’s release, and had been downloaded about 4 million times by opening weekend. In December, the FBI arrested a Bronx man on charges that he uploaded the film to a file-sharing website. Twentieth Century Fox later filed six lawsuits against several dozen people it claims sold DVDs containing unfinished versions of the movie.

A Missiouri man was sentencedin February to two years in federal prison for illegally recording The Dark Knight in a theater and selling the movie on DVD. The man pleaded guilty to criminal copyright infringement for using a digital camera to record The Dark Knight on July 18, 2008 — opening day for the Warner Bros. blockbuster. He was caught as part of an investigation by the Motion Picture Association of America.